How Automatic Collection Works

Automatic collection runs continuously. The platform checks every working day for invoices coming up to their due date, and creates the payments to cover them. It is not a monthly event, and it does not wait for a billing run.

This page explains what starts a collection, which invoices go into it, and how to stop one before it happens.

How a Collection Starts

There are two triggers:

On a schedule, worked out from each invoice’s due date
On bill delivery, as soon as a bill reaches the customer

Each invoice has its own timetable, taken from its own due date. Customers on different billing cycles therefore have different collection dates, and collections go out on most working days.

Both triggers are optional and your system administrator sets them up. If neither is switched on, you collect by hand from Payment Runs instead.

Collection on a Schedule

Every working day, the platform looks for invoices approaching their due date. It works in two stages:

Create: a set number of working days before the due date, the platform creates the payment
Submit: a set number of working days before the collection date, it sends the payment to the provider

Both counts are in working days, so weekends and bank holidays do not shorten the notice period.

A typical setup creates the payment 5 working days ahead and submits it 4 working days ahead. On those timings, an invoice due on Friday the 20th has its payment created around the 13th and submitted around the 14th.

That gives you about a working week between the payment appearing in the platform and the money moving.

Your own timings may differ, as they are set for each payment provider. Ask your system administrator for the values in use. Where the timings have not been set, scheduled collection does not run for that provider. Every collection then has to come from a payment run.

The gap between the two stages matters. A payment that has been created but not yet submitted can still be cancelled.

Collection on Bill Delivery

The platform can also create and submit a payment as soon as a bill reaches the customer. Four events count as delivery:

The bill is emailed
The bill is printed
Someone delivers the invoice manually
The customer downloads the bill from MyAccount

Direct Debit and cards behave differently here. A delivery-triggered Direct Debit collects the delivered invoice’s balance along with anything already due. A delivery-triggered card collection waits until the delivered invoice is genuinely due. Nothing happens on the day of delivery if the due date is still ahead.

Delivery-triggered collection is off unless your system administrator switches it on.

What Gets Collected

Every one of these has to be true before an invoice is collected automatically:

The customer’s status allows automatic payments. Statuses meant for closed accounts normally do not.
The payment method in force is one set up for collection runs. Direct Debit and the continuous card methods normally are. Cheque, cash and bank transfer are not. See Payment Types to check your own.
The customer has a usable mandate or card, with Automatic among its Use For Collection options.
That mandate or card is not restricted to other payment types.
The invoice has been sent and still has a balance outstanding.
The total clears the payment threshold set on the payment method.

Where an invoice carries its own payment method, that method wins over the customer’s. See Changing the Payment Method on an Invoice.

Use For Collection is worth a closer look, because it covers three separate things: manual collection, Direct Debit runs, and automatic collection. A mandate can be perfectly good for collecting by hand and still be passed over by automatic collection. Automatic is not selected by default. Check it first whenever a collection you expected did not happen.

Where a customer has more than one mandate or card, Account Collection Order decides which the platform reaches for first. Where two share the same order, it takes the most recently set up.

Why an Older Invoice Joins a Collection

A collection is not tied to a single invoice. Once a customer qualifies, the platform collects everything they owe on that payment method.

The daily check picks up a customer when one of their invoices reaches its create day. It then gathers every other invoice on the same payment method whose create day has already passed, along with any credit notes. All of it becomes one payment.

This is why an invoice that went uncollected earlier turns up later. An invoice can be missed because the customer had no active mandate at the time. If nobody collects it once they set one up, the next collection sweeps it in. That is the platform’s normal behaviour rather than a fault.

The collection date is the latest due date among the invoices included, never the earliest. An old invoice does not pull the collection forward. It travels with the newest invoice in the group.

Example: a customer has an invoice due on the 20th, and an older one from three months ago that was never collected. The platform creates a single payment covering both, dated the 20th. The customer sees one Direct Debit for the combined amount.

Invoices are grouped by customer and payment method. An invoice you have switched to a different payment method is collected separately from the rest. Where its new method is not collectable, it is not collected at all.

How Much, and When

The amount is the total outstanding across every invoice included, with credit notes deducted.

Credit notes are only deducted when they carry a payment method that is itself collectable. A credit note moved to something like a write-off method drops out of the sum. The collection then goes ahead for the full amount. Check the payment method on a credit note if a collection looks too high.

Payment methods carry a minimum threshold. Where the total falls below it, the platform creates no payment and waits for the balance to build. Customers on a final bill can have a threshold of their own.

The collection date is passed to the payment provider as the date to debit the account. Providers accept only a certain range of dates. For the window Stripe accepts, and what happens either side of it, see Direct Debit Collections.

Submitting a payment is not the same as receiving the money. For clearing times, see Bank Processing Timeline.

Stopping a Collection

There are five ways to stop a payment being taken, depending on how permanent you need the change to be.

Change the customer’s payment method. Use this when the customer should stop paying by Direct Debit or card altogether. Every invoice without a method of its own follows the change straight away, approved ones included. See Editing a Customer.

Turn off automatic collection on the mandate or card. Edit the Direct Debit account or payment card and remove Automatic from Use For Collection. The customer stays on Direct Debit, and you can still collect by hand or in a payment run. The daily check leaves them alone. Use this for a customer who should only ever be collected deliberately.

Set a different payment method on the single invoice. Use this when only one bill should be left out. Nothing else on the account changes. See Setting a Payment Method on an Invoice.

Take the payment another way first. Record the payment against the invoice so nothing is left outstanding. Do this before the create day, which on typical timings is a working week before the due date.

Cancel the collection once it exists. Between creation and submission the payment sits waiting to be sent, which on typical timings is a full working day. View the payment and use Actions menu > Cancel Collection.

When Automatic Collection Does Not Run

Nothing is collected automatically when:

The timings have not been set for the payment provider. Collect from Payment Runs instead.
The customer’s status does not allow automatic payments.
No mandate or card has Automatic enabled. The platform raises a TODO naming the invoice that triggered the attempt and the balance it could not collect.
The balance is below the payment threshold. The platform creates nothing and raises no TODO.
The daily check did not run on the day an invoice reached its create day.

That last case is worth understanding. The schedule looks for invoices reaching their create day exactly. An invoice that misses its own day is not retried on its own afterwards. It is still swept into the next collection triggered by another invoice for the same customer. Where no later invoice is coming, collect it from a payment run.

Invoices that automatic collection cannot attempt are counted on the billing run, under Manual Direct Debit Collection Required and Collect by Card. See The Next Steps panel.

If a Collection Fails or Is Delayed

Payments move through the stages described in Payment Status.

Delayed collections: where the payment provider rejects a charge date for being too soon, the platform reschedules and retries. It uses the earliest date the mandate allows. It raises a Direct Debit Collection Delayed TODO so you can see it has moved. The date on the payment record may therefore not be the date the money finally leaves the account.

Failed collections: the platform reverses the payment, puts the balance back on the invoice, and raises a ticket and a TODO. Where you have set up correspondence for failed payments, it sends that too. The invoice becomes outstanding again, so a later collection can sweep it up in the ordinary way.

Retries: a mandate can carry Automatic Retries, which asks the provider to try a failed collection again where the failure reason allows it.

To charge for a bounced payment, see Charging a Failed Payment Fee.

Direct Debit Accounts: mandates, collection methods, and processing times
Payment Cards: stored cards and card collection
Payment Runs: collecting by hand when automatic collection cannot
Auto Top-up Profiles: automatic collection triggered by a low balance rather than an invoice
Payment Types and Records: the payment methods and thresholds behind all of this

Chasing payments by hand when the platform could be collecting them for you? see how SAFE Billing Platform automates Direct Debit and card collection